M. Night Shyamalan spotted filming new Apple series in Center City

M. Night Shyamalan (center) is on the set of a psychological thriller series he is directing for Apple TV called Crumpet, filming in Rittenhouse Square December 4, 2018.

TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer

M. Night Shyamalan this week was back at work in Center City, where he was spotted filming scenes for an upcoming, as-yet-unnamed series for Apple that will star Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint, The Walking Dead’s Toby Kebbell, and Six Feet Under’s Lauren Ambrose.

Created by writer Tony Basgallop (creator of popular British TV series Hotel Babylon), the series will be produced by Shyamalan’s Blinding Edge Pictures. The Philly filmmaker will also direct the show’s first episode and serve as an executive producer. While plot details are scarce, Deadline reports that the series will follow parents Dorothy (Ambrose) and Sean Turner (Kebbell), who hire a nanny to help them with their newborn child. Grint, meanwhile, plays Julian, Dorothy’s younger brother.

Crews working on a new Apple series from M. Night Shyamalan at 18th and Walnut Streets on Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2018.

The show brought Shyamalan to town on Tuesday, when gentleman paparazzo HughE Dillon spotted crews filming at two locations in Center City. Most of the work, Dillon says, happened at 21st and Spruce Streets, where Shyamalan and co. filmed “a misty evening scene.” Additionally, Dillon says, crews installed fake leaves on trees and bushes in the area to give a more effective “fall” feeling to the scene.

TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer

A car is crashed at the entrance to Rittenhouse Square December 4, 2018, where M. Night Shyamalan is on the set of a as-yet-unnamed psychological thriller series he is directing for Apple TV.

From there, the series’ crew headed to 18th and Walnut Streets, where they had set up a car crash scene, complete with a wrecked vehicle placed at an entrance to Rittenhouse Square. The crew also installed fake bushes around the park for that scene to add more fall feeling, Dillon says.

HughE Dillon

A crew member totes a fake bush in Rittenhouse Square for M. Night Shyamalan's new Apple series.

The Apple series is Shyamalan’s latest Philly-filmed project, coming on the heels of Glass, which filmed in the city earlier this year with stars Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, and James McAvoy. A followup to 2000’s Unbreakable and 2016’s Split, that film is slated for a Jan. 18 release.